Wow! Talladega both bores and scares...Kenseth wins the 500, Keselowski wins another round in the championship chase

When things are this tight, you just know something is going to happen (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

By Mike Mulhern mikemulhern.net

TALLADEGA, Ala.
Even by Talladega standards this finish was over the top.
With Tony Stewart -- who just moments before was the leader of Sunday's Talladega 500, and looking to earn enough points to fight his way back into the Sprint Cup championship hunt -- literally on his top....after his move to block a pass by Michael Waltrip went so badly awry.

Stewart, who spent most of the nice but cloudy afternoon struggling to work his way into contention, in a race dominated by surprising Jamie McMurray, crowd favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Daytona winner Matt Kenseth.
And if Stewart could have held on for the win and made it the final mile to the finish line, he would have moved to within 10 or 12 points of the NASCAR tour leader, Brad Keselowski, heading this week to Charlotte Motor Speedway for Round Five of the 10-race chase.
But as it turned out, Stewart wound up 22nd, and he's now 46 points down and all but out of the chase. The most a man can earn in a playoff race is 48 points.
Clint Bowyer too was right with Stewart, trying to get back in the heat of the chase, and he was within seconds -- and sight of the finish line -- of doing just that.
But Kenseth pounded Bowyer into the infield in the late-race scrambling, and Bowyer then got caught up in that 25-man crash. He finished 23rd, and now 40 points down is in precarious position.
Indeed the title chase, after four playoff races, still looks like a three-man fight, with Keselowski picking up points on both Jimmie Johnson (a crash victim, 17th) and Denny Hamlin (a non-factor all day, 14th at the finish).

Matt Kenseth, all alone at the end (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

Kenseth, who ironically is leaving team owner Jack Roush and Ford at the end of the season, in six weeks, to join Joe Gibbs and Toyota, was relieved both at having a good day and a good finish, after a long run of hard luck.
"Clint and I got together a little on the backstretch.... I don't know if that was my bad or what," Kenseth said, in a rather subdued victory celebration.
"That really slowed the group, and we got a big lead -- which typically isn't good here. I looked in my mirror and saw them coming at me three-wide.
"I let Tony have his spot. It didn't look like he had a big push behind him.
"We stayed locked together until we got to turn three, and I thought it was going to be a drag race to the finish.
"I didn't know what was going to happen... and I'm still not sure what happened.
"Somehow Tony got turned and caused a big wreck."

Kenseth and teammate Greg Biffle are both out of the title hunt. But both came out lucky Sunday.
What did Biffle (6th) see in those final seconds?
"You wouldn't believe me," Biffle said. "Unbelievable -- I was probably 20th, and five-wide up against the wall. And then cars started wrecking.
"A car flew over the top of my car as I turned to the bottom and missed guys by three inches.
"It was like Days of Thunder coming through the smoke and the grass... and just kept it going straight.
"It was the craziest thing I've ever been involved in in my life."

Jimmie Johnson gets a ride back to the garage from banged up teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

Casey Mears, a good runner here, proved it again, leading late and pushing Michael Waltrip at the end, in what proved to the decisive incident.
"We had the run to win or be top-three," Mears said. "I was shoving Michael pretty good. Tony, you could tell for a second he thought 'Should I go down (to block) or not?'
"When he decided, it was already too late.
"This stuff happens. Everybody is trying to win and make something happen.
"It was about the biggest wreck we've had in a long time at the end of a race. I saw Tony upside-down, and I'm glad to see he's okay.
"It's unbelievable we can run around here 200 mph, have a pile-up like that, and everybody walks out feeling pretty good."

Jeff Gordon, who sneaked through to finish second, said "That literally is bumper cars at almost 200 mph... and I don't know anybody that likes that."
The finish was Gordon's sixth top-three finish in the past seven races (two thirds, four seconds), amazing. But it still can't change that 35th at Chicago, though he's now 42 points down, with something of a long-shot at the title.

Kurt Busch hasn't had a memorable season (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

While most of the race was monotonously boring, there were moments of emotion, yes. And Kurt Busch provided some of those.
He was leading midway when he suddenly ran out of gas. And Busch wound up bouncing into the infield wall.
During the yellow Busch got out to look at his car and decided it could be repaired. So he cranked it up and started to drive it back to the garage, though without his helmet.
Busch was naturally angry at running out of gas, and had asked his crew what the problem was.
NASCAR ordered him to stop on the track, to stop scattering debris. But without his helmet Busch didn't get the radio message.
So Busch roared off while the emergency crews were still at his car, one even with his arm inside, and other with an emergency medical kit on the roof, which fell off.
NASCAR angrily order Busch's car parked for the rest of the race....which is his last with team owner James Finch. Busch two weeks ago decided to move over to Barney Visser's team, beginning this week at Charlotte.
So when Busch emerged from the infield medical center, it was to a jam of reporters and crewmen.

Bobby Labonte limps back after that last lap crash, in flames (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

Busch hugged his crewmen, then discussed his fate:
"We ran out of gas... ran out of gas while leading. A miscalculation, or our fuel cell wasn't picking up all the fuel.
"That is just small-team blues. You work as hard as you can to keep up with the big teams, and sometimes little itty-bitty numbers will take you out.
"I got out of the car and surveyed the damage; saw that it could still roll. So I jumped back in. These engines will run at 20 percent of fuel pressure to get it back to the garage. So I tried like heck.
"That is the competitor in me... the desire I have...and what gets misconstrued all the time.
"This is the way my life works. Today is a perfect example: I am leading, I wreck, I run out of gas. I tried to get back in the race, and now NASCAR is yelling at me because I don't have my helmet on, and I'm trying to get it to the garage so the guys can work on it.
"Now I'm in trouble, this little storm right here.
"This is my life.
"I'm not complaining; I put myself in a lot of these situations.
"But it's on to good things now, moving forward. I got all the bad luck out of the way.
"This year has been a great year to test me in every way."

Jamie McMurray, in the grass, in the final miles. He drove a strong race (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

As usual, Jr didn't wihn, so it was the worst race ever... I was there, in the Talledega Tower and it was excellent racing from my vantage point. Probably the most exciting race I didn't see on TV this year (tongue-in-cheek).

The issue of this particular Diehard 500 was that the racing was very good, but NASCAR's ludicrous hatred of tandem drafting meant that the drivers had to breathe the cars more than they should have to. Passing was still harder than it should have been because no one could sustain pushing another car to where they would clear someone or break in the lanes above the bottom one.

The wrecks issue is one of driver error, not the rules. Stewart swerved too many times and it wiped out the field. Drivers and fans who want to complain the field is too bunch up keep missing the point - that's what competition creates.

That Dale Junior suffered a concussion will intensify criticism of this kind of racing, and it will ignore the concussions suffered by Ward Burton and Jeremy Mayfield in crashes on non-restrictor plate tracks as well as Denny Hamlin at Talladega in 2008 in a solo crash - never mind the more severe injuries suffered by Sterling Marlin at Kansas in 2002 and Jerry Nadeau at Richmond in 2003 - and there are probably concussions we don't know about from recent years.

If anything Daytona and Talladega by being restricted are safer than places like Charlotte that are unrestricted and where G-readings have been higher in crashes than what we usually see at the plate tracks.

The fact of speeds hitting 200 at the plate tracks, though, warrants pause. NASCAR needs to restrict the cars more so they can't break 194 at those places.

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